Hi tweets,

Thanks for the advice a number of kind souls gave me about nice easy bird walks around Snohomish. We finally went up there today, despite the threatening weather forecast. Got a beautiful pie plate at Bruning Pottery, then drove out to Fobes Road, where after a false start we located the trailhead -- it's not at the END of the road, but about a mile short of that.

It turned out to be a lovely walk. All the usual suspects -- yellowthroats, three different swallows, and so on. Probably the three highlights were:

1) GREAT views of an American Bittern, about 150 feet off, completely unconcerned about us. He had a serious itch under his, um... chin, I guess, and was unable to achieve the rock-like stillness that they do. Had to keep scratching. Very cool sighting, for us.

2) A beautiful nesting pair of Bullock's Orioles, the nest barely off the trail. We watched, spellbound, for five minutes, before they seemed to get irritated with us, so we moved on. Their nest seems to have incorporated a portion of a woven produce bag. Very cool as well.

3) An adult Cedar Waxwing performed a neat magic trick. It sat on a branch next to a begging offspring, and then magically produced a berry in its bill, which it stuffed into the kid. Then it did it again, and again: three berries produced from (one supposes) its crop. Then they flew off, but it was still pretty impressive.

Thanks for the tips, everyone! This is a lovely walk and we'll definitely be going back there - AND, it didn't rain a DROP on us until the second we got back to the car and I remarked that I hadn't felt a drop of rain, and just that second, a big fat raindrop went *splat* on my glasses.

Cheers,

Josh Hayes in damp Licton Springs
coralliophila at live dot com